Fernanda Ly: Australia's next top pink-haired model

When you think of well-known Australian models the likes of Miranda Kerr, Gemma Ward, Elle Macpherson and Jessica Hart spring to mind. All share similarities – tall, white, blonde and one brunette.

But there's a new Australian model taking charge in the fashion world and she's already graced four Vogue covers, but you probably haven't heard of Fernanda Ly ... yet.

Fernanda Ly: There's a new Australian model taking charge in the fashion world and she's already graced four Vogue covers.

Photo: Nicholas Hunt

The bubble gum pink-haired, Australian-Asian model, favoured by Louis Vuitton, is just 19 years old and has been picked by the fashion house over and over since its fall (northern hemisphere autumn) 2015 show, despite her relatively short height (in model terms), standing 1.73 metres ( 5ft 8in) tall.

Growing up in Sydney, she was first discovered while casually strolling through a shopping centre with her mother – something most girls could only dream about happening, but she remains quite nonchalant about it all.

Advertisement

The Australian rising star on the cover of Vogue Australia's Chinese special edition issue.

Unlike her contemporaries, such as Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, both 20, who have millions upon millions of social media fans, Ly keeps a relatively low profile with just 60,000 Instagram followers. Despite that, her career has taken off pretty rapidly, but the Sydneysider has yet to grasp her success.

"It sort of messed up my [performance] on my exams during my last year of high school," she said. "I thought I'd go to uni for a bit to see what would happen, but then I got more and more gigs."

Even US Vogue's former creative director and Anna Wintour's right-hand woman, Grace Coddington, described Ly as a face she is particularly excited about.

"There are two or three girls that I like, but I don't know if they're very Vogue girls. Vogue wants a girl with a certain stature. I like the slightly more quirky girls ... There's an Asian-Australian girl I love called Fernanda Ly. She's got pink hair. Love her. If you think about it, [she's] a little bit odd or special," she told Vogue.com in November.

But for Ly, managed primarily managed by Priscilla's Model Management in Sydney, the fashion world is not her be-all and end-all.

"I'm not really too into the fashion world," she added to Teen Vogue. "I like to separate work from my personal life."

It might have something to do with the fact that the level-headed IT girl feels like it all might be taken away from her just as quickly as it started.

"I'm sort of scared that this will be my peak and everything will go downhill from here," she said.

In the unlikely event that does happen, she has a backup plan that couldn't be further removed from the world of fashion.

"The owner of a relatively successful ice-cream store with franchises across the globe," she told i-D.